Disciple Making in the Essential Church

23_03_16 -Ep.303 - Run With Horses Podcast – Disciple Making in the Essential Church

Podcast: rwh.podbean.com
Website: www.runwithhorses.net
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@rwhpodcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RWHpodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rwh_podcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RWH_podcast

Today we make the shift from defining what the essential church IS to considering what the church does in more detail. It will be no surprise for regular listeners to know that we will begin with Disciple Making in the Essential Church.

Welcome to Run With Horses! My name is Norman and my goal is to help you thrive as a follower of Jesus. The spiritual life is both incredibly simple and potentially the most difficult part of your life. God invites you to live intentionally and on His mission. It’s very cool that we can do that together!

I have been thinking about the idea of Essential Ecclesiology for awhile now. Last week we concluded with my working definition of the essential church.

MY WORKING DEFINITION OF CHURCH
A CHURCH is a group of Jesus’ disciples who worship Him in spirit and truth, humbly offering their lives as living sacrifices, together living out the mission of Jesus as His witnesses to the world, by sharing the gospel and making disciples through teaching obedience to His commands as they edify and equip others to join them on His mission.

There are definitely things that are only implied and not spelled out. There are definitely questions a church will need to answer for itself based on its local context and culture.
Specifically,
What do you not see in this definition? There is not much to tell HOW to do these things.
Let’s make a list.
How do you worship God? Spirit and Truth gives some guidance. Truth should lead us to look at the Bible for answers.
What does the life of a living sacrifice look like? Humility is there. What is sacrifice? Probably want to look at the OT for some insight.
How do we get together? When, where, how often, what do we do? The NT gives some idea of the big picture, Acts and Paul’s letters need to be investigated.
What is the mission of Jesus? The Gospels give His words directly, Acts gives the early churches application of them.
What is the Gospel and how do we best communicate it in our location to the people around us? Back to the NT.
How do we make disciples in our context?
What are Jesus commands?
How do we edify others? Who is responsible to do this?

I believe that disciple making is at the center of what it means to be the church.
Many have produced catechisms to help teach the foundational truths of God’s Word. What is the chief end of man is the way one talks about our purpose. The answer, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. ("Glorify" does not mean make glorious. It means [to] reflect or display as glorious. Other words you could use for "end" are "goal" or "purpose". - John Piper)
HOW do we glorify God? Primarily by humble obedience to His commands. You cannot glorify God and do your own thing! Disciple Making is at the center of what it means to be a follower of Jesus so a simple connection would be to say that we best glorify God when we are most engaged in his mission of reconciliation through relational disciple making.
I will be at a retreat this weekend focusing on discipleship, it’s perfect timing so I will start today going over some of the material I am preparing for the retreat.
We start session one with the topic SEEDS: What’s our Disciple Making DNA?
What is DNA?
******
Thanks for joining me again today! How is your church doing at fulfilling it’s biblical purpose? I’d love to hear from you, write me at norman@runwithhorses.net or leave a comment on the Run With Horses Podcast facebook page. Take time today to pause and thank God for His work in your life and keep running.